From: Tony Smith <tony@...>
Date: 2002-02-06T21:41:56+09:00
Subject: Re: revision control, arch and subversion

Sean Russell wrote:

> One of the misconceptions is that a version control system has to be based
> on a filesystem backend.

I'm in violent agreement with you there Sean :-) Another misconception is 
that it has to be based on a *relational* database. FWIW, Perforce also 
uses DB files for its meta-data, and it's been a huge win for us over the 
years. An RDBMS would have been an order of magnitude more complex to 
install and administrate; and much, much slower.

From an architectural point of view, the key point is that using a database 
allows you to use RCS files if you want to for storing revision and their 
deltas but your meta-data can span files/revisions. Ultimately this means 
that users can ask questions of the SCM system at a much higher level.

> ObRuby: Subversion comes with a Ruby binding, already.  It isn't complete,
> but it is there, in subversion/bindings/ruby.

Perforce too has Ruby bindings, I've made sure of that!

Tony
-- 
Tony Smith
tony at perforce dot com